‘Tomorrow we start cycling at 6 o’clock’ Zoë says while she gorges her bread. After 11 in the morning the sun is too hot. It is only 2 o’clock but we cycled enough for the day. Luckily the restaurant exist and with a red face, arms and legs we crash on one of the plastic garden chairs. We really hope that the man was right about his restaurant.
#THE GREEN HELL SKIN#
The sun roasts our skin with some nice red colours and we count the kilometers until we reach 110. We don’t see much more than five small farms. We put some extra sunscreen and continue our way. That will be 110 and it is already ten o’clock in the morning’ Zoë thinks. In this heat there isn’t anything better to do than rest in the shade and watch to crazy cyclists battling the Chaco.
Everywhere you see Paraguayans with there teréré cup and a big thermos.
Hollowed cow horns serve as the cup and are filled with ground tea leaves, hierba, which they fill with ice cold water and drink with a metal straw. ’There is a small road side restaurant after sixty kilometers, for the rest there is nothing’ the men say, while they sip from there cup of teréré, the cold maté variant of Paraguay. ‘What do we find on the road?’ we ask in a local tyre repair shop, while we search for some shade under his roof. That’s 30 cows a truck, 200 kilogram of meat per cow, in total 600.000 kilograms of meat every day. We didn’t count them all, but we guess that it are easily a hundred trucks a day. The road is anything but desolate, with an endless stream of trucks carrying cattle. ‘It seems that the first 40 kilometer are the hardest with all this traffic’ Olivier says. One truck after another passes by and some of them push us of the road. Hereafter the road crosses the Rio Paraguay and then we are really in the Chaco, the region that covers the complete west of Paraguay, 60 percent of the complete territory. North of the capital, Asuncion, the Transchaco starts officially. With ten kilograms of food and a big barrel of extra water we are ready for the green hel, El Chaco’s nickname. El Chaco is also famous for its enormous biodiversity with jaguars, pumas, anteaters, snakes and many birds. We saw a photo report of National Geographic about Mennonites who refuse all the technology and still live very basic. Halfway the route live big Mennonite communities with a traditional German culture. There are barely any tourists so the chances to meet the authentic culture are high. We want to go to Santa Cruz in Bolivia and this is the fastest way.
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